This year marks the third year Invest in Children Global has stood alongside Charleston Hope, and we are deeply grateful for their $20,000 grant supporting our work in Title I elementary schools across the Charleston tri-county area. Partners who return year after year give us something money alone cannot. They give us the stability to keep showing up for children, and healing depends on adults who stay.
Invest in Children Global exists to bring healing and hope to traumatized youth around the world. Founded as Invest in Children Africa, the organization has worked with war-affected children in countries including Uganda, Rwanda, Kenya, Ethiopia, Russia, Turkey, and Greece, and here at home in Charleston. Their camps combine trauma-based curriculum with music, art, writing, and movement, giving children a safe place to tell their stories. Their resiliency curriculum, developed with the University of Pennsylvania’s positive psychology program, walks young people through forgiveness, hope, perseverance, and anger. They also train teachers and youth workers on how trauma affects the brain, so the adults in a child’s life know how to help. Their approach is captured in a phrase we love: giving youth a voice when words are not enough.
That phrase could describe much of what happens in our schools. Charleston Hope places licensed clinicians, care coordinators, and graduate interns inside Title I elementary schools, where children receive counseling during the school day without the barriers of transportation, waitlists, or missed work for parents. For our youngest students, we use child-centered play therapy, because young children often work through hard experiences through play long before they can put them into words. Invest in Children Global reaches children through a drum or a paintbrush, and we often reach them through a sand tray or a set of toys. Both grow out of the same belief that children heal when they are given a way to express what they carry.
Our work overlaps in other ways too. Both organizations equip teachers with trauma-informed training, knowing that a child’s healing continues in the classroom long after a session ends. Both invest in the next generation of helpers through student internships, including students from the College of Charleston, where Charleston Hope began. And both are committed to children in Charleston who deserve the chance to rise above their circumstances.
To everyone at Invest in Children Global, thank you for three years of faithful partnership and for believing in the children, families, and school communities at the heart of our work.
If you believe every child should be able to get the support they need, we invite you to join us at charlestonhope.org.
